Full Moon
by Relala
Summary: That’s the holler of a werewolf when he’s feeling poor.•LUPIN SERIES•


**DISCLAIMER:** _Harry Potter, its publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. No money is being made for this. No copyright infringement is intended_.

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**TITLE: **Full Moon

**AUTHOR: **Relala

**BETA:** lady of scarlet

**FANDOM STATUS: **Fanon

**WARNING: **Sequel to Bitten. Second part of the **Lupin Series. **

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**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _This story really was supposed to __be__ up by "end or middle of June" and I apologize to anyone if they were waiting. That's not likely, though. So, with no __further__ ado, I give you all the follow up to** Bitten.** __Also, it wasn't supposed to a series but I'll be writing more of these **One Shots** in what I'll be calling the **Lupin Series.** If you like, you can read them as** Stand Alone's** as I don't think they'll share anything besides being little parts of Remus Lupin's life. Enjoy. And review if you have the time, please! _

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**"That's the holler of a werewolf when he's feeling poor" **

**Werewolf by Cat Power**

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**WINDOWS **

The five-year-old boy covers his bedroom windows up with layers of quilts. They are threadbare, made up of old brown fabric from well-worn robes and dull reds from his mother's old dresses, but they'll be alright for what he wants them to do. What he _needs _them to do. So he drags a chair from the kitchen to his window and stands on it, holding tacks between his impressionable lips and pressing the fabric into the walls slowly. _Carefully_. He doesn't want to fall down, of course, and he certainly cannot afford to be caught in the act.

Remus John Lupin is not doing anything naughty ...yet he cannot escape the nervousness which blooms within his heart like a tainted flower. He is a coward. He tries to tell himself otherwise by saying that it's not that he is doing anything _bad_ so much as it is that he is doing something _wrong_. There is a vast world of difference between those two words, a difference which he cannot put his tiny finger on. But there _is _a difference.

These makeshift curtains will not hurt anyone. It is just that Mama and Papa wouldn't approve of his reasoning. Wouldn't understand. Even at five, Remus knows that some fears are meant to be kept secret, locked within your own mind. Too private to share with the rest of the world.

He steps down from the chair and examines his work.

It's not a beautiful sight in the least. The quilts are lopsided and there are far too many tacks in the walls now...but they provide darkness and escape and that was all that they were truly meant for in the first place.

Remus may be a coward but cowards can be quite clever.

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**GIBBOUS **

It's a sweltering hot afternoon in midsummer and his Mama assumes that, like most boys, her son will want to frolic under the sunbursts at the nearby park. Last summer, when she had worked at the ice cream stand, going to the park had been on their regular schedule. Every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday she would coat him down in sunscreen and while she served popsicles and ice cream sandwiches he would play in the park, getting sand in his hair and mud underneath his nails as he roughhoused with the other children.

But today his Mama forgets that it is not _last summer_.

Today she scoops him up into her arms as if he doesn't weigh any more than a sack of potatoes and brings him out into the brilliant rays of the sun. Today his Mama forgets that they have fired her from the ice cream shop because they believe lycanthropy is contagious by touch, and that the children in the park have been forbidden to play with him. Today she forgets that the Gibbous Moon is riding high in the sky and that he hates to look at it.

Remus allows her these sporadic moments of denial, of course. Allows her these illusions of having a normal family. They both know that tomorrow is not a Gibbous Moon and that denial can only be indulged today.

Because tomorrow denial could be deadly.

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**SAFETY **

Mama and Papa are not naturally worrisome people. If anything Remus's parents are the type to wear their hearts on their sleeves, walking into darkened alleyways with warm smiles and trusting eyes. They are the type of people to stop on the streets and give the hungry their last bits of coin and believe the tales that the people tell about getting food and not more booze. They are the type of people who genuinely care.

Or, at least, that's how his Mama and Papa usually are.

Tonight, they are worrisome. Tonight, they do not stop to hear stories nor spare glances at the people who go hungry in the street. Their eyes are shaded behind hoods and their smiles thin. Tonight, his Mama and Papa are merely broken replicas of their normal selves.

_It's because of me_, Remus thinks_, that they endure so much pain_.

His Mama doesn't like her duty of shepherding her son into the darkness of the barn where he must be kept for his own safety. His Papa trembles, tears of remorse streaming down his face like raindrops, every time he latches the door in his son's face.

Later, when the moon is on the rise, they will try and convince themselves that this is only for his safety. If people didn't lie to themselves they wouldn't be able to live, after all.

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**FEAR**

The yellow coloured eyes of the Remus-wolf slice through the fathomless darkness of the enclosed barn with panic. It doesn't understand.

Displeasure. Confusion. Rage_**. **_

Human emotions do not affect this creature as they do the boy but they _are_ felt to a certain degree. The wolf is not a whole creature, merely a half, just as the boy is. They live inside one body and share two minds. Emotions affect the wolf mildly. Primal urges affect the boy.

_Fear. _

That is not an emotion that the wolf is well aquatinted with and it does not know why the boy is feeling this, though it courses through the wolf's every limb. It's inconvenient. It's irrational. And sharing bodies is such a pain. Especially when neither party likes each other.

Of course, they try and make it easier on one another by simply fading out when the other is present but sometimes that's just not possible. For tonight, the boy is staying. For tonight, they must get along or face pain. Neither of them, at least, **likes **hurting themselves. That fact makes things so much easier for both of them.

The golden coloured wolf casts his eyes upwards, seeking out with sharp eyes the tiny slivers of moonbeams which slip like dust through the rafters. Comfort. It is nice to feel the chilly breeze through his fur as the moon twinkles above. Longing. To feel muscles stretch and bunch together as he runs through a meadow of silver-coloured light. The world made of sweet scents and undiscovered pathways, bathed in flickering moonlight.

_Fear. _

Fear of the moon. Of the wolf. Of _himself_.

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**PROBLEM**

The golden wolf whines in the darkness, low and deep inside his throat, ears flat and head tilted to the side. Asking a question in a language incapable of forming human words. Such things aren't needed, however, because the boy inside the wolf has been a monster for so long that he understands.

He hears the whine as clearly as someone asking, "_What's wrong?" _

The only problem is that he cannot explain to a _wolf _how the _full moon _terrifies him, cannot explain the fear of getting out and _killing _someone so he can eat. Remus Lupin is terrified of the hunger that gnaws at his gut, telling him that if he breaks down the barn door there will be _food _just through the field. Thinking, breathing, living human beings. People he knows as family and friends. He cannot explain that to the Remus-wolf who really does see the people in the village as just food. A way to ease the aching pain within his gut and keep him living.

Survival, that's all it is to the wolf. Nothing personal. Animals do not hold grudges or feel hatred. The law of the wild is clear: You may kill for the protection of yourself or your territory or your family. You may kill if you are hungry.

Fear, thick enough to choke on, cripples the wolf.

This could pose a problem.

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**MELODY **

Although most humans don't acknowledge the werewolf as a thinking, feeling creature, it is such. The werewolf is not _always_ a beast. It is a Pack creature, dependent on the company and the affection of its own species. When grouped together, they take care of their own.

A werewolf can be a considerate creature when it wants to be.

Throwing his muzzle upwards, the wolf let lose a string of words which a human ear would not understand, letting his wintry voice sail into the air.

The notes were golden, bubbling up like sunshine setting across the skyline, filling the wolf's chest and bursting out from his throat. The wolf sang to sooth the boy, a bedtime song for his other half who could not let go of his fear.

It was a melody sung out into darkness on the loneliest of nights, giving peace to both the boy and the wolf together.

Sometimes a werewolf can love.

THE END


End file.
